What Does the Earth Actually Look Like?

What does the Earth actually look like? Michael Stevens at Vsauce explains just how limited our vision is and answering what Earth looks like all depends on how one defines “look.” We humans can only see a tiny, tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum as visible light. Chromoscope is a great website where you can “see” what the Milky Way looks like through other portions of the spectrum.

And why is north always shown as “up” on views of Earth? Australians might prefer to show it flipped the other way around. Plus, pictures of Earth are limited to two dimensions and projecting a 3D object onto a flat surface has inherent limitations. You can play with various projects on Jason Davies’s site.